Editorial Policy
CardCurator covers credit cards, rewards programs, transfer bonuses, and award travel. This page explains how we decide what to publish, how we keep pages current, and how we separate monetization from recommendations.
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Core Principles
What Drives Rankings
CardCurator rankings are based on card economics, card fit, and feature relevance. We prioritize measurable inputs like earn rates, annual fees, current signup bonuses, foreign transaction fees, and transferable-points value. We do not sell rank positions.
Primary Source Standard
When we publish or refresh a card page, we verify key details against issuer pages, cardmember terms, official rewards-program pages, or direct program announcements. Aggregator sites can be useful for discovery, but CardCurator treats primary sources as the authoritative version when a conflict exists.
Update Policy
Time-sensitive content is refreshed when issuer offers, card features, award charts, or transfer bonuses change. Evergreen guides are reviewed on a recurring basis and updated when rankings, methodology, or cited offers become stale. We prefer a short, explicit refresh over quietly leaving outdated language live.
Affiliate Independence
CardCurator may earn affiliate commissions from approved applications, but compensation does not override data. A non-affiliate card can rank above an affiliate card if it is a better fit or offers stronger economics. We would rather keep the ranking defensible than force a monetized result.
Corrections
If an issuer page, reward category, transfer bonus, or valuation on CardCurator is wrong, the error should be corrected quickly and directly. We prefer visible corrections and updated dates over hiding changes.
How A Page Gets Published
1. Data collection
Issuer pages, program terms, current offers, and benefit details are gathered and normalized.
2. Ranking and comparison
Cards are compared using CardCurator’s documented methodology and audience-specific tradeoffs.
3. Editorial review
Copy is checked for overstatement, missing caveats, and unsupported claims.
4. Ongoing refresh
When core terms change, the page is updated rather than left to drift out of date.